Never as readily available and accessible as it should be, The Big Bus belatedly pulls back into in-print status through Warner Archive. Better manufactured-on-demand than never! His lead-up to The Muppet Movie, director James Frawley keeps the atmosphere light with slapstick as the company behind the $12 million nuclear-powered superbus known as Cyclops has no […]
review
Posted inArts & Culture
Byzantium
The film takes its title from an old hotel into which Clara (Gemma Arterton, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) moves with her “daughter,” Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan, The Host). The women are vampires; for 200 years they’ve been bound by blood and that’s a thirst they can’t quite quench, although Eleanor sure wishes she could. To survive, Eleanor seeks […]
Posted inMusic
My Name Is Nobody
A half-decade later, Fonda re-teamed with Leone, who this time served as producer for My Name Is Nobody. Although a far less serious film, it’s arguably more entertaining — a pure delight. See if you don’t agree, now that the 1973 film gallops out of the sunrise and onto Blu-ray. Fonda’s Jack Beauregard is an […]
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A Hijacking
The Rozen is en route to Mumbai when the weapons-toting Somalis overtake the ship and its seven-man crew. Writer/director Tobias Lindholm doesn’t utilize the captain as our viewpoint, but the cook, Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk, TV’s The Borgias), a nice man who makes a mean omelet. The other half of A Hijacking gets inside the head of […]
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LETTERS
Clearly, you have no idea that the movie is a dramatization of one of the most spectacular years of racing for a world championship in Formula One. Many of today’s Formula One drivers earn enough money that they could buy Oklahoma Gazette from Bill Bleakley so they could fire you and hire a competent reviewer […]
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Somerset West — Black Cloud
Coming off a lengthy hiatus, the band’s passionate take on rock music (lining up neatly alongside acts like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday and Manchester Orchestra) is back in vogue, thanks to the “emo revival” now in full swing. Black Cloud brings most of the same touchstones found in its 2010 release, The Golden Land, […]
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Grave secrets
Without the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, Calgon detergent and Fred Rogers’ tonsils, Night of the Living Dead would not exist. And without Night of the Living Dead, there would be no The Walking Dead, no World War Z, no entire cottage industry centered around those “all messed-up” ghouls who crave and dine […]
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The Spirit
Former Flash Gordon Sam Jones plays another Sunday-funnies superstar as The Spirit, the crime fighter formerly known as square-jawed, straight-and-narrow cop Denny Colt. When he’s shot by a baddie and presumed dead, Denny takes advantage of the situation by donning the teeny-tiniest of blue masks to disguise his identity as The Spirit, who sets about […]
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Abducted
But crap happens, and while being all cute and cuddly in L.A.’s famed Griffith Park, the happy couple is darted from afar and drugged into a state of unconsciousness. They awake in a dingy cell looking not unlike the basement from the original Saw. Something’s up and yet, something else is up, because whoever their […]
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Day of the Dead
By the time 1985 rolled around, Romero had made one other Dead film: the brilliant Dawn of the Dead. Other countries, especially Italy and Spain, turned zombie movies into virtual cash machines and zombies, for the first time, were everywhere. So there was great anticipation for Day of the Dead, Romero’s third film in what […]